Does Research Match Reality? A Survey of Operations Research and Analytics Studies Focused on Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a widespread and compound social, economic, and human rights issue occurring in every region of the world. While there have been an increasing number of anti-human trafficking works from the Operations Research (OR) and Analytics domains in recent years, no systematic review of this literature currently exists. We fill this gap by providing a systematic literature review that identifies and classifies the body of OR and analytics research related to the anti-human trafficking domain, thereby illustrating the collective impact of the field to date. We classify existing literature to identify current trends in methodologies, theoretical approaches, data sources, trafficking contexts, target regions, victim-survivor demographics, and focus within the well-established 4P's principles. Using these findings, we discuss the extent to which the current literature aligns with the global demographics of human trafficking and identify existing research gaps to propose an agenda for Operations Research and Analytics researchers.